OBSERVER Photos by Braden Carmen Silver Creek Superintendent Todd Crandall informed parents of a non-credible threat of a school shooting on Thursday morning, shortly after students arrived on campus.

SILVER CREEK — A non-credible threat of incredible significance impacted the Silver Creek Central School District on Thursday.

Around 11 p.m. Wednesday, a Silver Creek student received an anonymous phone call claiming a school shooting would occur on Thursday. That student then called the Chautauqua County Sheriff’s Department, who then notified the district.

Throughout Wednesday night into Thursday morning, the school’s Resource Officer, Deputy Wes Johnson, was in contact with his superior, as well as Silver Creek High School Principal Kyle Yelich and Superintendent Todd Crandall.

Johnson spoke with the complainant late Wednesday night “for probably half an hour,” he said. “She seemed very sincere, she seemed very concerned.”

The student who claimed to have received the phone call is part of the Silver Creek district, but does not attend the school on a day-to-day basis. The student regularly attends BOCES, which was also notified of the threat and increased police presence on Thursday. The student claimed no specific school was named in the threatening phone call.

“Because there was no school mentioned … we were sort of up in the air as to which school they were talking about,” Johnson said.

The student who reported the call to the authorities claimed other students also received threatening phone calls about the alleged incident. School officials and law enforcement contacted the families of each student named by the complainant, but in every case, the student and/or their family claimed they were not contacted.

“I was told that they never received phone calls. They received correspondence from the actual complainant,” Johnson said.

The complainant also later revealed they received multiple other phone calls, believed to be pranks, throughout that night. That information was not initially shared with law enforcement or the district.

School officials and law enforcement searched various social media platforms throughout the night and the early morning, but found no mention of plans of a school shooting. Police also surveyed the school grounds throughout the night and found nothing suspicious.

“We also spoke with a Sergeant this morning, a different supervisor, on the way to work. I think it’s important that we had layers of people double-checking each other’s work, so to speak,” Crandall said.

Because nothing was found to corroborate the claims, the district and law enforcement both agreed with moving forward with school on Thursday morning, with an increased presence from the Sheriff’s Department. Three additional officers joined Deputy Johnson so that two officers were posted at each entrance of the building.

“I told (my Lieutenant) I wasn’t sure that this was a legitimate incident, or that it a legitimate fear for us, but we were going to treat it as such until the morning,” Johnson said.

“I do want to thank the Sheriff’s Department. If anything, we pushed them back, because we didn’t want to alarm – there was no reason to alarm. But they said to take it serious, until we don’t,” Crandall said.

The district did not initially share the potential threat with parents and members of the community in hopes of avoiding unnecessary panic, because the threat was deemed non-credible.

Yelich explained, “The other component of this is, at what point is this communicated out there? There were five big indicators we wanted to check off before making that determination. The first one was there were no missed phone calls or messages, either on office or personal phones, saying that those were corroborated threats here. There were no emails (or messages from) our SRS System – the service we hired through BOCES that goes to the administrative team, the SRO and the nurse, that says something feels imminent. … We hadn’t gotten contacted by any other parent or entity … and there was nothing on social media. There was no corroboration of students chatting back and forth outside of the original message that Deputy Johnson had gotten.”

Yelich continued, “Those five big indicators kind of had us in a holding pattern before elevating that to the full parent communication. What set that off was, truly, the arrival of students that were somehow notified of what had transpired last night. It was an immediate rush to adults, which is a good thing. A number of students came to trusted adults all throughout the building and told us what they had heard.”

Once the district heard from students about the threat as they arrived at school, the district immediately took steps to notify the community, including a parent broadcast by Superintendent Crandall.

“A call was made within five minutes,” Crandall said.

Crandall believes students who were contacted Wednesday night through Thursday morning shared that they were contacted, which spread the word of the potential threat throughout the student body.

“We all looked (on social media) and found nothing, or else we would have made that call sooner,” Crandall said. “We do not want to not be transparent with families, but on the other hand, we don’t want to alarm families when we knew there was nothing to be concerned about at that point.”

Once more details became available later in the day, Crandall issued a second broadcast to update the community. “We want to thank the community, the students, and the staff for their support,” Crandall said. “… I hope we don’t have to do it again, but it’s the sign of the times, unfortunately.”